Reform must include public health insurance

Cambria

A viable, public Medicare-like option is essential to health care reform. The private insurance industry’s padding of profit, cost of advertising, and payroll of staffs of actuaries, salespeople, lobbyists, and lawyers add unnecessary costs to our health care system and to our insurance premiums.

A big part of the misinformation about a public program has to do with confusing it with “socialized medicine.” A government health insurance plan simply widens the risk pool and distributes money more efficiently within the existing private and public health care delivery system, thus bringing costs down and broadening coverage. It is not a government-run health care delivery system.

Those of us who currently must rely on individual private insurance policies know that if ever there was a “bureaucracy between patient and doctor” it is the bureaucracy of the private insurance industry.

I want the money I pay for health insurance to be used for my benefit, not against my best interests, as it is now. I want concerned physicians, not private shareholders, to decide what treatment is necessary to maintain my good health.

There is no health care reform without the inclusion of a serious, viable public health insurance option.